A new book reveals that the International Red Cross and the Vatican helped thousands of Nazis escape indictment, the British Telegraph reported Friday.

According to the report, author Gerald Steinacher claims in the book “Nazis On The Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Europe” that prominent war criminals Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were among those helped by the institutions to evade justice.

Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard, exposes in his book how thousands of Nazis managed to disappear and start new lives following World War II by exploiting the system struggling to deal with the millions of Eurpeans displaced by the war. He bases most of his book on previously unpublished Red Cross documents.

According to the Telegraph, historians estimate that roughly 8,000 SS men fled to Canada and the United Kingdom alone by using documents erroneously issued by the Red Cross. Meanwhile, the majority of fleeing Nazis chose Spain and South America as their hideouts.

But while the Red Cross was unknowingly aiding the Nazis escape, Steinacher claims in the book that the Vatican was doing the same, wittingly. Driven, perhaps, by a desire to revive a Christian Europe, or by fear of the Soviet Union, the Vatican used its refugee commission to supply leading war criminals with fake identity documents, he claims.

(Source: Ynet)